How long should I wait for intimacy to improve in this relationship?

[dreamora]

Hi everyone, I’m looking for some outside perspective on a situation with a man in his 50’s I’ve been seeing for about four months.

We have a fantastic connection, get along incredibly well, and have both expressed that we are in love with each other. He makes future plans with me, gives me lots of nice compliments, and is genuinely affectionate.

However, from the very beginning, he was honest about experiencing nerves-related ED as it had been a few years since he last had sex. Early on, he took Viagra once, it was successful, and we quickly developed a very active, regular sex life. My observation during that time was that he occasionally struggled to finish, mentioning that he tended to overthink things and found it hard to relax. He also complains a lot about his hips or knees hurting when we have sex and says he wants to get fitter. He does seem to stress about his weight, I think he’s gorgeous but I don’t know if he feels insecure.

Everything changed when he started a new medication for an unrelated health issue. He says It completely killed off his libido and erections, causing us to barely have sex for the past couple of months.

Because this was bothering him, he decided to stop taking that medication two to three weeks ago. Since then, we've had a long conversation (that he instigated) where I admitted I was worried we were becoming more like friends than lovers. He strongly reassured me that he finds me physically attractive, and wants sex with me, but admitted he feels under immense pressure to perform physically, even though mentally he wants to be with me.

On top of that, he is often completely exhausted from work and falls asleep within minutes of getting into bed. He asked me to just be patient and let the meds get out of his system. I had been instigating sex with him but I’ve stopped now because I don’t want to be pestering him and I want to trust him.

The pressure cycle really peaked a few days ago. He texted me all day saying he was in the mood for sex, I didn’t over respond too much but showed interest, but after we went to the gym, he was too tired and achy and went straight to sleep. We did have sex the next morning, but I had a suspicion that he only did it because he felt he owed it to me.

I think this was true because yesterday, he randomly called me out on it, saying he thought I was pissed off that nothing happened the night before.

To be honest, deep down I was a little let down because it had been built up all day, but I told him I understood he was tired. I genuinely don't want to pressure him, but the more rejected I feel, the more it affects my self-confidence.

Without sounding big-headed, I know I am attractive and I get a lot of (unwanted) attention from men, yet I keep taking his ED personally. I am also far more physically fit than him, a healthy body weight and go to the gym more often. He then told me I should get a PT session because he’s seen me in the gym and he thinks my form isn’t good, and I need to vary my exercises.

We woke up early this morning and I knew sex wasn’t on the menu, as he wasn’t aroused when I hugged him, kept saying he was very achy from the gym and chatting away about the weekend so instead of waiting, I got up and got dressed. He then told me how attractive I looked dressed for work.

Right now, I feel like our physical relationship is entirely on his terms, and I have to just wait around for him to be in the mood. I've become unsure of how to act, I hesitate to hug him, be flirty, or initiate anything because I'm worried about making him feel pressured and it’s making my insecurities run wild.

We can talk openly about it but I don’t want to keep bringing it up, and I am trying to mentally detach because everything else about us is so good, but I have a nagging bad feeling about our future. I want to trust his honesty, but I have a few trains of thought and unsure if it’s just a combination of them all:

1. The ED is a combination of age, fatigue, and health, and it might not just get better.
2. He wants to see me as a sexual partner, but he doesn’t deep down, and isn’t ready to admit this because he loves me otherwise
3. he took me off the market to boost his ego about having an attractive girlfriend and now doesn’t need to try because he’s got me but he’s threatened by my attractiveness, so is bringing my confidence down
4. He finds my ‘desperation’ and desire to have sex with him unattractive and pressurising

Am I facing a choice between learning to live with this or walking away? How do I stop taking this personally, and how can we rebuild intimacy without all this pressure? How long should I wait? I really don’t think it should be this complicated.

Any advice would be appreciated.

You know what, once a week is fine for me. I had an ok sex life with my ex, sometimes it was more, sometimes less but it was fairly spontaneous and natural.

I can’t remember how big the gaps are between us being intimate but it’s so sporadic even though we see each other many times a week.

It hasn’t felt natural with DP the last 2 months and I agree it’s so early on, that it feels wrong that something is wrong. Maybe it’s the medication still wearing off but I think I’ve set a timeline in my head of how long I am going to give the situation before I address it more firmly and I’m going to start seeing him less. Not as a punishment

Aside from saying he had ED through nerves the first time we had sex, he told me he’s got a high sex drive and was initiating it with me morning and night, multiple times a week. He told me he watched porn when he was single but alluded that he’s not even really in the mood to wank either but I don’t know if this is true he could be telling me anything. I could be totally on the wrong track and being unfair and letting my insecurities run away with me

I would end it or it will end up eating you up. Your self esteem will end up being crushed, asking yourself every day if he fancies you. At this stage there should be no uncertainty. You have so many doubts about yourself, you shouldn't feel like this in a new relationship.
It's only 4 months in so this should be the best time. If this was a long relationship maybe you'd work through it. Agree with other posters that there are way too many issues this early.
Don't know for sure about porn but there are loads of guys of all ages now who can only get off to women on screens. So it could be a factor.

I didn’t type this in my OP as I knew what the answers would be

He took a woman on a date before we got together and got drunk and tried to sleep with her and had ED. He said he fancied her but the date was boring and all she did was talk about her ex and then after that she didn’t initiate any more dates and was blowing hot and cold. However since being with him he frequently texts her, he keeps offering me his phone to look at the messages and opens the chat and shows me they just chat and are now ‘friends’. She’s still living with her ex husband so got a complicated situation. She knows about me not because he told her, someone else did and she said she was happy for him. She sends him selfies. Which is weird.

He was texting her in front of me so told him last night that I don’t like this situation all that much, he did fancy her and I don’t think he would like it if I was texting a man I once tried to sleep with. He said he would text her less but they are just friends. I said he could have any friends he liked but this is weird.

This was after he had asked me if I was pissed off about sex and said no.

He tells me his phone code all the time and went through a phase of showing me young women on instagram with big boobs until I said it was giving me the ick so he’s stopped.

I also know way too much about his sex life with his ex. It’s living in my brain

Part of me thinks I am not sexually attractive to him as I am far too available but we have discussed that we shouldn’t play games with each other, although I think deep down he is playing a game with me now and one that’s going to end up with me getting very hurt.

@dreamora you are right, you know what everyone is going to say here! You deserve better than this man.

I’ve been in this situation twice. It never improved it just eroded my confidence.

Crikey op, you are old enough to know that we should believe what we SEE not what we are told. This is it, this is the package and it’s NOT going to get any better. Take away all his positive stories about how this is new and it’ll be fine and judge on what you see and feel about this, he’s all talk and no action! And I’m sorry you do not love eachother, you don’t even KNOW eachother! This has been a nice little lustful honeymoon period and reality is now kicking in. Don’t confuse yourself with big words like love when you’re just at the start of figuring out who this guy is…a washed up manipulator!

sounds like you can do WAY better and he knows it.

Yes, I think he knows you can do better and is negging you by showing you pictures of Instagram models on his phone and trying to make you feel insecure about this woman from a prior date. He's putting you down. When someone shows you who they are believe them!

OP, seriously, 4 months in and this is how he's making you feel?

I was slightly concerned this guy was stopping necessary medication from your first post, but the more you talk, the more hideous he sounds.

You start off talking about how attractive you know you are.This isn't a bad thing at all - you sound like you are, in general, a confident woman. Every subsequent post feels like that confidence is dripping out of you down the drain. No partner is supposed to ever make you feel like that. Heck, no friend should make you feel like that, let alone a bloke who professes to love you.

You also elude to the 'early days' as though you're in a 20 year marriage. 4 months in is the early days!

Your latest posts just confirm what the rest of the relationship is telling you. Get out of it now before you get even more heartbroken down the line. Don't waste another day/week/month of your time on this guy, life shouldn't be this hard.

All this in only FOUR MONTHS??

Sex issues, emotional manipulation, health problems, weird neggy comments about your exercise, weird complicated baggage with another woman, 'going through a phase' of showing you pictures of women with big boobs on Instagram? All of that, in four months?

You barely know this man, to be honest. You're talking about your deep connection like you've been married 20 years. You haven't. He's just some bloke you've been briefly dating and this is a ridiculous amount of drama. It's meant to be easy and fun at this stage. Your relationship was OK for a matter of what... a few weeks?

This is insane. Why on earth would you be trying to salvage this shitshow?

OP, your update is pretty awful.

So many of us have been where you are - specifically, involved with a man where we KNOW things are not right and we KNOW what people will say, so we are reluctant to be vocal about everything. And it never gets better. We just find ourselves twisting our mind doing all the mental gymnastics to try to make ourselves feel that "it's OK, it's not that bad", making excuses for poor behaviour, or trying to convince ourselves that we're the ones being difficult, expecting too much, or whatever it is we have to do to try to justify the things we have to negotiate in our minds in order to stay with the person, and so on. It's a fast-track to having self-worth eroded.

You can skip this wholly unnecessary part and end it. Or you can stay and find your happiness levels decrease more and more over time.

You'll feel sad for a while if you end up, but the damage that will be done to your self-worth the longer you stay is going to be more painful. He's absolutely negging you - @DinoDoughnut81 is spot on.

Don't do it to yourself. You don't have to tolerate this shite. Look up 'Jennie Young rhetorical patterns'.

With all due respect, this is a mind fuck after 4 months. You've started seeing him as a project to fix. IMO you need to throw him back It actually feels controlling.

Life’s far far too short - I’d be knocking this on the head.

I have been sitting on this for weeks thinking I’m over reacting and being insecure

I only think I’m attractive because I have been told this but yes I’m fairly confident and outgoing. I see the gym as fun and motivating and we were meant to be going together for this reason not because we are trying to become athletes. I laughed my form is shit because sometimes that’s just life.

He knows I don’t like him texting that woman and wants me to trust him at the same time withholding sex from me, and I think he’s withholding sex sometimes because he can’t make me orgasm easily, I have to help myself and I think it has hit a nerve. I can’t orgasm because sex is so loaded and unpredictable, I’m not relaxed enough.

My stuff is all at his house and I don’t have a key. I was meant to be going out with him this evening and spending the day tomorrow then I am going on holiday for a week without him. I’m not sure what to do next. I can get my stuff and leave his house tonight, or I can just leave tomorrow as planned then I have a week to really think things over and not react out of panic and insecurity. I don’t really want to give him the satisfaction of having some kind of paranoid meltdown where he gaslights me.

You won't be giving him any satisfaction if you don't care what he does or thinks. He doesn't deserve this head space. Who cares what he thinks? This isnt a marriage, it's 4 months of seeing someone where the last two months have make you feel like crap.

You don't owe him anything.

@dreamora it doesn't sound like you are panicking or acting out of insecurity. You are acting because the bloke you are seeing is not meeting your needs, not behaving respectfully when you raise concerns and clearly has issues. Your reaction is very proportionate - as far as I can tell from the information you have posted on here.

Go over this evening, get your stuff and tell him that this isn't working for you. Don't get drawn into a discussion or justification, just tell him and leave it there.

Get your stuff and leave.

This man will ruin your self esteem.

I think he does care about me in his own way, I don’t think he can fake all that. He genuinely can be absolutely lovely, and in many other ways he’s great and it’s what’s kept me around, these incidents are very occasionally but enough to bother me and start to be an issue. Sometimes I see the real vulnerable him but I think it makes him uncomfortable so he tries to gain back control.

absolute madness
you keep talking about the early days…hasn’t it been 4m total?
you think the guys maybe trying to make you insecure and it’s working, that’s enough to leave. You want to have sex but he isn’t working on that. That’s enough to leave too. I was going to ask Why on earth do you know so much about his ex then I read that you actually know so much about their sex life too and he’s constantly showing you stuff to make you jealous and talking to women he’s tried to shag in the past.
why on earth are you putting yourself through this. Who’s made you think you need to be so supportive of a man and his ‘health’ issues, that’s you need to persist doing so for some ungrateful little shit who you barely know, at your own expense

"He texted me all day saying he was in the mood for sex"
Then
"he was too tired and achy and went straight to sleep"
You had sex the next morning
Then
"He randomly called me out on it, saying he thought I was pissed off that nothing happened the night before"

This is manipulation. He leads you on sexually, then doesn't want it, then when you have sex the next day he has to criticise you. This is not normal and not good. Neither is his criticism of your form in the gym and suggesting you get a PT when he's the one not in good shape.

There's something very wrong in this relationship and he's unlikely to stop doing this. It's only been 4 months and he's playing games and sniping at you. In your shoes I'd consider this a fling that has run its course.

4 months in and…

’then told me I should get a PT session because he’s seen me in the gym and he thinks my form isn’t good, and I need to vary my exercises’

GOD NO! And that’s before the lacklustre/intermittent sex with Achy Alan.

You have everyone’s permission to toss this one back. Or not. lol.

Or maybe it's control, rather than care. The former can mask as the latter in men who are insecure, which sounds very much like he is - hence the negging.

Men who genuinely care, also care about how the words they say and the actions they make, will land:

"He was texting her in front of me so told him last night that I don’t like this situation all that much, he did fancy her and I don’t think he would like it if I was texting a man I once tried to sleep with. He said he would text her less but they are just friends. I said he could have any friends he liked but this is weird.
This was after he had asked me if I was pissed off about sex and said no."

Look at the context - this happened after he asked if you were pissed off about sex. He's insecure; he's trying to make you jealous. This isn't caring behaviour, OP. You've got your hands full with him.

If he’s making you doubt yourself he’s not it. Always put yourself first, what do you need?

Ugh the drama. After four months it’s highly unlikely you’re in love with each other. Just dump him and move on. He sounds like a total waste of time and energy. If you’re very attractive try dating a younger man.

OP you keep repeating yourself as if you’re hoping someone here will say yes, he’s worth the effort, it’s going to be wonderful if you just let him manage it his way.

I’d have ended it weeks ago, as would most that have responded on here. I’d end it this weekend, delete, block and go forward with your life, chalking this up as an unfortunate experience and a lucky exit.

And whether “a good seeing-to” is a threat or a promise, nobody would get a second chance to say that to me. He sounds manipulative, selfish and frankly nasty, even if you’re still seeing him through the rose-tinted lens of romance.